Welcoming nominees and guests to the 76th DGA Awards, director, producer and writer Judd Apatow greeted the audience joking, “I’m your host Bradley Cooper in an even more beguiling Jewish nose.”
Apatow opened up with a zinger drafting off the DGA’s history of never striking against the studios. He noted that his agents told him to hold out for more money for his fifth time as host of the ceremony: “But in the spirit of the DGA I accepted their first offer.”
Taking aim at the current political landscape, Apatow addressed the crowd stating, “I swear to god if this is the only time you vote this year, you can all go fuck yourselves.” He noted the age of the likely nominees for the presidential election, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The race is going to be between “a guy old enough to have met Hitler and a guy who wishes he had.”
Dedicating the night to the “legendary” Norman Lear, who recently died at 101, Apatow swore not to rest until he “found his killer.”
The official master of ceremonies then turned his attention to other award show hosts: “I’d like to thank Jo Koy for lowering the bar for me. I’d like to thank the Directors Guild who had the courage to hire a white Jewish man to host this ceremony.”
Taking stock of the past year in the entertainment industry, Apatow mused about what the business learned from the double-strike year: “Fran Drescher is the voice of reason and unfortunately that’s what reason sounds like.”
Apatow also touched on the merger fever that has gripped Hollywood amid hard times for legacy studios. “Here’s how it’s gonna happen. First, Warner Bros. Discovery will merge with Paramount and Comcast will merge with Sony. Apple will merge with Netflix and then take over Warner Paramount Discovery. Apple does a hostile takeover of Comcast Sony and then immediately engulfs Warner Paramount Discovery. Apple does a hostile takeover of Comcast Sony and then immediately engulfs Warner Paramount Discovery. Then Elon Musk takes his own money and executes a leveraged buyout of both of those companies. And, in order to streamline the operation, Musk fires everyone except for 37 people. Then Jeff Bezos jumps in and buys the whole thing as a Valentine’s gift to his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez. Then she gets tired of it and flips it to Salma Hayek. And then it’s a golden age of creativity and risk-taking and it’s like the ’70s and all that. And that’s suddenly when Byron Allen comes up and buys the whole thing with cash.”
Continuing to roast the Globes, Apatow threw shade at the new categories added for the 2024 ceremony and offered up a few suggestions of his own including: “Best movie starring Timothée Chalamet in a hat. Best Tom Cruise movie based on a previous Tom Cruise movie. The best Kevin Spacey movie only being released in Northern Italy. The best Steven Soderbergh film shot on a Ring doorbell.”
Later on in the ceremony Apatow lamented the decline in viewership for award shows and the fact that the DGA ceremony is still not televised. He blamed it in part on celebrities being so exposed via social media. “We all need to agree to not be out there so much. So we only see you on the awards. Marty, no more TikTok, no more dancing. You need to be mysterious again. Chris Nolan, no more only Fans accounts. I enjoy it but I can live without it.”
Last year Apatow skewered “Top Gun: Maverick” star Tom Cruise, calling the actor’s famous acrobatic stunt work, “an ad for scientology.” As for this year’s nominees, the best feature film director nods at the include Greta Gerwig for “Barbie,” Christopher Nolan for “Oppenheimer,” Martin Scorsese for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Yorgos Lanthimos for “Poor Things” and Alexander Payne for “The Holdovers.”
